Once overcome by houseguests, it’s now time to slumber

Oakville Beaver

We’ve had houseguests — for an extended period of time. Charlie, a heavy drinker and a light sleeper, and Ellie, Charlie’s older and more sagely sister, a nonetheless goofy girl with a big appetite for life and an even bigger appetite for food.

Alas, Charlie and Ellie left this morning and I’m already missing them. They came, they conquered, and they certainly entertained. Honestly, they did pretty much everything you would expect, save for sleep.

Yes, we’ve had houseguests, for (have I mentioned) an extended period of time, who had an unhealthy aversion toward sleep — and an even unhealthier aversion to allowing anyone else in the house to sweetly or soundly slumber.

Which explains why you may have seen me tweeting at an ungodly hour, or perhaps you were in receipt of one of my incoherent, early morning e-mails. Naturally, you may be wondering how we came to have extended houseguests. I know there were moments during their stay when I sure did.

A while back, our eldest son and his fiancé plotted out a “trip of a lifetime” (their second), a four-week adventure across Asia. Four countries in all, and an itinerary so ambitious you could not fit in a long nap, which is what I had to take after just reading that exhausting schedule.

Well, in order to embark on this journey they needed to find care for their two Boxers, Charlie and Ellie, a.k.a, Chuck and Lou, or, collectively speaking: CharLou.

And when I hastily failed to volunteer for the job, my family volunteered me... you know how most dogs rush to be petted and loved? Well, Boxers kind of come at you sideways, or backwards, wiggling their stubby tails and behinds. And, thusly, I came to find myself caring for a couple of ‘wiggle bums.’

Take Charlie. Charlie is all long legs, skin and bones. He doesn’t much care for food and he exercises like a fanatic. This boy can run a hole through the wind. But he’s not all speed, he’s endurance, too.

As a pup, he’d follow me around for hours whenever I’d cut the grass on the riding mower. If the boy ever stops running, he drinks like a drunk, big, sloppy, splashy gulps across the floor.

Charlie’s expression is one of infinite sadness, or perpetual guilt. He tends to slink about looking like he’s on the lam from the law after pulling off a series of bank heists. Not saying he’s at all insecure, but whenever I sit down, there he is, resting his chin on my chest and planting a possessive paw across my belly. Yeah, he’s hard to stay mad at, even if he did roust me in the middle of the night.

Then there’s Ellie. We joke that she’s a saint, an old soul. Even as a pup she was mature and wise beyond her years. As mentioned, Ellie is a little pudgy, and a lot persistent. If she decides to start barking at 2 a.m. because something in her world ain’t exactly the way she desires — she’s not in the right room, or on the right bed, or maybe the stars aren’t properly aligned — there’s no stopping her.

And as my wife and I listened one night to this canine cacophony, praying for it to stop, we looked at each other and said, in perfect unison: “They’re lucky they’re cute.” Damn cute.

We’ve had damn cute houseguests for an extended period of time. They came, they conquered, they left, and now I’m going back to bed.